The project has always revolved around the procurement in 2010 of two steel beams pulled from the rubble of New York's World Trade Center towers. But the project also recently obtained a 400-pound slab of limestone taken from the damaged Pentagon, which will be included in the monument to be built at Evergreen-Rotary Park.

That places the memorial in rare company around the nation, where few sites — mostly on the East Coast — include artifacts from both the trade center and the Pentagon.

Dave Fergus of Bremerton-based Rice Fergus Miller architects submitted the building permit request to the city last week. Nicole Floyd, a city land-use planner, said it typically takes four to six weeks to process such a permit.

Building is slated to take about two months once ground is broken. Fergus said the memorial will be open to the public by the 12th anniversary of the attacks, if not before.

Tucked into a "postage stamp"-sized corner of a new eastern portion

of Evergreen-Rotary Park, the memorial site will perch over the Port Washington Narrows.

The committee has raised $89,000 through donations and will have much volunteer labor to construct the project, thanks to a regional company and a near army of trade laborers who are pitching in, Lusk said.

The project's construction will be shepherded by Anderson Construction, which is also building Harrison's orthopedic hospital. Eric Olson, a senior project manager at the Seattle office of Anderson Construction, was visiting Rice Fergus Miller in Bremerton when he saw plans for the project. He was immediately drawn to them, he said, and the company agreed to take on the project pro bono.

Anderson works with about 15 different contractors in the area, and Olson asked each if they'd be interested in donating toward the cause.

"Every single superintendent responded," he said.

Lusk said that on a trip with the beams for an event at the Suquamish Clearwater Casino last summer, he talked with Lee Newgent, executive secretary of the Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council. Lusk said that through Newgent, the memorial committee was connected with skilled laborers of all kinds who wanted to lend a hand.

"From there, it has just grown exponentially," he said.

The Pentagon limestone was obtained through the efforts of John Jackson, a commercial steel company owner and Thurston County resident who is building a memorial of his own to the 9/11 attacks. He'd heard about the Kitsap project and decided to give one of the two pieces he'd received to the effort.

Jackson worked through former U.S. Rep. Brian Baird and others to connect with the Pentagon and get the limestone, he said.

The beams have been welded to a base plate that will be affixed to the ground at Evergreen-Rotary Park. Erected, they will lean toward each other, which will create an archway visitors can walk through.

Text on rings around the base of the beams, composed of granite tiles, will tell stories from that fateful day. A ring will be dedicated to each of the four planes used by the hijackers. The diameter of the outermost ring is identical to the fuselage of a Boeing 767, Fergus said.

A short, semicircular concrete wall surrounding the rings will include the 400-pound piece of the Pentagon.

A nearby commemorative plaza will include bricks etched with personal messages from supporters of the project. Bricks are still available for purchase for $250. The outer wall of the plaza will display tiles painted by Kitsap County students born in or around 2001.

The entire memorial will be surrounded by a flagpole and 30 ginkgo trees, with each tree representing about 100 of the almost 3,000 people who lost their lives that day, Fergus said.

A meandering path out to the memorial is symbolic of the chaotic and precarious events of that day, he added.

Lusk said he knows that there are those who might say a 9/11 memorial has no place on the West Coast, all the way across the country from the tragedies of the day. He doesn't buy that, citing the armed services members from Washington — Naval Base Kitsap among them — who responded in the wake of those attacks. More than anything, though, he feels that the effects of the attacks weren't limited to the Eastern Seaboard.